Childcare expansion across Canada led by for-profit providers: report
Licensed childcare spaces across Canada grew by 16.5 per cent between 2022 and 2025, but for-profit providers developed two-thirds of the new spaces.
According to research published in June by Child Care Now, just under one-third of new spaces were managed by the non-profit sector, and only 1 per cent of spaces were directly provided by the public sector.
The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system aims to bring down the cost of childcare through several bilateral agreements with provinces and territories. In some provinces, like British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, the expansion of childcare services was to be led primarily by the non-profit and public sectors.
New Brunswick has been the only province to negotiate a lifting of the cap on for-profit childcare provision, and Ontario has been seeking a similar change.
However, research across several jurisdictions shows that “public and non-profit child care is significantly more likely to be better quality than for-profit child care.”
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